Total recall
by Forgottem memories
Summary: A rare disorder amongst the Venture family can change everything and absolutely nothing. Heavily AU, rated for language and content.
1. Chapter 1

Total recall

A rare and unusual disorder in the venture family can make everything and nothing absolutely different.

Disclaimer: I don't own the venture brothers, be it the person(s) mentioned or the show.

Episode 01: Dia de Los Dangerous!

Tijuana Mexico, one of the drunkest party cities in North America, land of tequila and spring break loving teens from America, was currently playing host to a few… Interesting individuals.

"And that is why… why… none of you are listening, are you?" A balding man asked. The (possibly) honored stood behind a podium in a (Mostly) empty auditorium.

He stepped down, more irritated than frustrated at the man apologizing to him in halting English.

"Whatever, I came, I talked, where's my money?" The check handed to him was huge, he couldn't believe how many… pesos… he got. He refrained from a massive and unpleasant amount of cussing by downing a "diet" pill.

"Can you believe this Brock? Me, the Doctor Venture, comes and gives them a lecture, and they want to pay me in pesos, Brock, pesos!" Brock, the tall blond and almost disturbingly muscled bodyguard, grunted non-committaly. He obviously didn't care.

"Hey pop, pop!" Yelled the newest, and blondest irritance. Hank was running up to where the two older men were, wearing a sombrero and waving about bags of candy skulls.

"Where's your brother, Hank?" The old redhead asked his son.

"Here dad." A quiet voice said from behind the two older men. turned around to face his son, not noticing, or perhaps not caring that he did not have a poncho, sombrero, or a ridiculous amount of death-themed candy.

Actually, Dean, the youngest son of the current Venture scion, was dressed in jeans, a white t-shirt and a more formal black button up t-shirt over that. In contrast to his brother, he was a very unhealthy and skinny looking redhead who, by the deep, dark bags under his eyes, desperately needed more sleep than he was getting. On his back was a somewhat small back-pack, bulging slightly to one side.

"Now Dean, you know better than to sneak off like that." The (possibly) good doctor told his errant son.

"I was listening to your speech on super science." The redhead said in his quiet voice. The doctor quirked an eyebrow. Neither of his two children were all that interested in his profession, though Hank may have had a better excuse. The doctor patted his son on the head and responded condescendingly.

"Of course you were son. Of course you were." He ignored the small butterfly that landed on his shoulder, mocking his child.

"Here's twenty bucks for each of you boys, go do… something. Get fireworks, have fun, but don't come back until tonight. Got it, boys?" The boys grabbed the proffered bills from their father. Hank held his out in front of him, staring at it as if it were a crisp, fresh, c-note. His other son just pocketed the crinkled note.

Hank apparently already had a plan, running off to go and gather… something. Brock followed as quietly as he could, which, considering his training, was rather silent. Dean merely sighed and started following after the Swedish murder machine before his father stopped him.

"Now Dean, I know I probably don't have to say this but-"

"Keep an eye on your brother, and don't let him tell people his last name, or let them know that he has money." Dean interrupted his father by finishing the sentence from memory.

"That's right. Well, have fun!" If could seem eager, then that's how Dean would've described him as he left. Instead he was somewhat eager, but still mostly annoyed.

This presented a problem for the young man. He had no idea where his brother and their bodyguard had gone. He just went back in the same general direction, keeping an ear out for the sounds of bullets and screaming that would giveaway the psychotic older mans position.

------

Dean didn't find the blond duo until well after it was too late to have a normal day. His brother was locked in the trunk of a car, and Brock was unconscious, if not dead, behind it. There were two men arguing in the car, which wasn't moving yet. Dean opened the passenger door, startling the two costumed weirdos.

"Move over." He told them as he squeezed into the vehicle.

"Who the hell are you?!" The henchmen he shoved to the side yelled.

"He's Venture's other kid." The driving henchmen said. They still hadn't started driving.

"Then what the hell's he doing getting in the car!?"

"It's less of a hassle to get kidnapped than deal with my dad over my brother. Are we going to get moving, you're wasting gas." #21 stared at the redhead while his partner, #24, started driving.

The drive was long and uncomfortably silent, filled with many potholes and weird, unpleasant smirks from Dean every time they heard their cargo bump around.

--- ---

The "Holding Cell" the boys were placed in didn't look much like a prison room. It looked like an under furnished storage room with a couple of cots. After getting himself situated, Dean was sitting on one of the cots reading while his brother, who was looking a bit worse for wear, was half draped on another cot halfway across the room.

His wristwatch communicator had been taken by one of the more competent henches. He really wasn't all that worried about it, considering they hadn't bothered taking his cell phone.

"Ugh… Hey Dean-o! Where are we…?" Hank was slowly waking up, unaware of where exactly he was. He was surprised to see his brother, considering he'd been left far behind when he'd gone to get H.E.L.P.E.R. painted.

"A room in the flying base of this one guy." Dean responded as he flipped a page. He sounded a little irritated.

"What guy, hey, is the room flying? That means we're flying! We can fly! Fhwzooh!" The hyperactive blond started running around the room, arms out and attempting to imitate a plane. He never noticed his brother putting out a foot, but he did trip on said foot.

"Sit down and shut the hell up. I've already got a headache." Hank didn't get up from the floor. Dean nudged him with his foot, and Hank rolled over, his eyes teary, his lips quivering.

"If you start crying, we're going to find out if this hardcover is harder than your head." Hank silently and sullenly got up and laid down on his cot, facing the wall. Dean merely flipped another page in his book.

Sometime during their interment Dean pulled a pair of water bottles out of his backpack and tossed one to his still sulking brother. Aside from this nothing had changed between the two, with Dean still reading and his brother still sulking.

"You think we should do somethin'?" Hank finally asked his younger brother.

"Like what? Jump our captor, possibly get shot for your little 'Adventure' fix, just plain go do something stupid? If you want to do something, they never bothered locking the door, but I've got less than a hundred pages left." Hank brightened up as if the earlier incident hadn't even transpired. He got up with the strange, unquenchable energy of an ADHD child to check the door. Just as he went to turn the doorknob he found resistance. He twisted it harder, and whatever was on the other side did the same. Finally the two twisted the same way, opening the door inward and missing Hank by mere inches.

A strange man stood in the doorway. He wore a black jumpsuit and these weird accessories, culminating in a large pair of insectile wings on his back… Monarch butterfly wings, if Dean guessed right. What truly made the sight strange were the cookies.

Supervillians didn't play the good host for captives. They just don't.

"YARGH!" Hank jumped the oddly dressed man, pitifully slapping and rolling around on the ground with him. It was an altogether sad sight. What made it worse was that the butterfly wasn't even trying to win, and yet was. Winning, that is.

Dean grabbed a cookie off the floor to nibble at while his brother made a fool of himself. It actually got pretty boring after the first twenty seconds, and Dean was halfway done with his cookie when the unexpected happened.

A car fell through the roof. A freaking car, came and fell through the roof. This was a Brock Samson thing, it had to be.

And Brock was driving, go figure. Then the violence came. Lots and lots of violence, mostly by running over random henchmen.

"I have to wonder if waking up yesterday was worth it?" Dean asked himself as he moved over to stand with his brother and father, well outside of the range of the gratuitous and self serving violence.

---

Back on board the X-1 their father had some interesting news.

"Now boys, Daddy has some bad news. There was an incident back in my hotel room, so I need one of you to give up a kidney." It was strange how the super-scientist could say such a thing with a straight face.

"We'll do rock paper scissors for it, okay Dean?" Hank asked his younger brother, a stern expression on his face, seeming as though he had every intention of winning. Dean shrugged, an unpleasant gleam in his sunken, tired eyes.

"Alright Dean-o, one, two-HURK!" Hank hunched over, holding himself and whimpering, tears of pain leaking unwillingly from his eyes.

"Looks like I win Hank, foot beats a pair of rocks." Dean sat back down in his chair on the X-1, ignoring the whimpering of his brother as he was taken to the back of the radioactive jet.

Honestly, who'd trust the fate of his kidneys to a game of rock, paper, scissors?


	2. Chapter 2

Total recall

A rare and unusual disorder in the venture family can make everything and nothing absolutely different.

Disclaimer: I don't own the venture brothers, be it the person(s) mentioned or the show.

Episode 2: Careers in science!

"I wanted to stay home." Dean wanted nothing to do with space, Gargantua-1, or most of what his father or grandfather did, do, or had done. Could he have stayed home, he would have.

Unfortunately, that wasn't an option. They were a family of males, they didn't store much food that couldn't be cooked in the microwave. The stuff that couldn't be micro waved was eaten right out of the package. Worse still was that the only food left was on the shuttle he was currently in.

It just made him uncomfortable, having only a few sheets of metal and one layer of plastic between him and the certain death that was the vacuum of space.

"We heard you the first time." His father was very, very unsympathetic. So far as he was concerned, Dean was just being a whiny brat. Why couldn't he be like his other son, an obedient and oblivious lab rat whenever he needed a human test subject?

Dean just made a poor lab rat. He had this self-preservation thing.

"Hold on to your seats boys, we're docking." Brock was too used to these father-son spats. Dean wanted to do something that made Brock's job easier, and the doctor had some other plan. One that generally made his job harder.

Meeting them as they got off board was someone in a space suit. They looked… Female, Dean decided. Until she took off her headpiece, and Dean decided she had the most… unusual face. His brother, father, and bodyguard cringed, but that wasn't so bad as most of the napalm victim pictures he'd seen. Most of them.

The other person there was far more normal, and wasn't wearing the headpiece of his space-suit.

"Hello gang, I'm Colonel Bud Manstrong, and my companion here is-"

"Lieutenant Anna Baldavitch." Dean looked around himself to find his slightly extended family was all staring at the Lieutenant.

"So what's the-"

"What's wrong with my dad's floating monstrosity now?" spoke over his son, letting whatever Dean had to say die in the background. It was a quiet death, none attended the funeral.

"We don't know, that's why we called you." He was definitely American. He just had the accent of someone from the central American states.

The woman, on the other hand, wasn't. Dean wasn't too sure where she was from, he just knew that she didn't talk the same way as Manstrong or his (Slightly) extended family did.

Bud led them to the control center. Along the way the simpering fool seemed unable to keep from sparking his brothers imagination. His dearest brother, stereotypical blond that he was, believed it all. Space phantoms...

It's not that Dean didn't believe in ghosts, they had upset native Indian ghosts show up at least once a month. It's just that ghosts had names...

And that all the Gargantua-1 news articles he'd read over the interweb didn't have reports of a single death. It was that tiny tidbit alone that had him choosing to enter one of the most hostile environments for humans in existence instead of starving for a few days.

Dean's attention wavered back to his... host? As the man mentioned something about Sharky's machine. Something about the man bothered Dean... Something-

"Which way to one of the bathrooms?" Dean broke in, interrupting the man midway into another 'Space Phantom' story.

"The door on the right just up here, kid. Slides into the wall. Anyway back to-" And just like that, Dean started paying half attention again. He walked close to the wall, almost touching it, so it wasn't very noticeable that he was trailing his fingers along the wall as his mind drifted. Wherever his mind was going was lost when he jerked back into reality when his fingers slid into the groove where the door was.

The room was small, as was expected of anything in space. 'Or moving below water.' Dean thought as he turned the water to just a little warmer than tepid. He cupped his right hand under the trickling water and brought it up to his face.

He was stressed. That's all there was to it. His hand, fingers splayed out, moved up into his hair. His left eye focused on his left hand, his right eye was focused on the same spot, although his right hand was in the way. Most importantly, he was focusing on the white knuckles that were shaking from the pressure they were exerting.

"If I don't calm down I'm going to have an anxiety attack." Dean muttered lowly, fingers moving slowly through his hair. "Just calm, calm..."

He wiped the excess moisture from his face and fixed his hair before leaving the cramped bathroom, turning right as he exited.

"Boy." It's not possible to jump out of your own skin. That said, Dean made a very admirable attempt. Though he was certainly surprised, he didn't spin around like a loon and question who was behind him.

"Lieutenant." Because there was only one woman aboard the ship, and he was actually able to recognize people by voice.

He shivered slightly when he felt her hand on his shoulder. He wasn't an abused child, but he wasn't very big on contact.

"It's alright boy" He still couldn't tell what her accent was "there are many people who are claustrophobic." She gave him a slight push and they continued walking towards the command center.

"It's not claustrophobia, lieutenant. I'm just very, way too aware of the fact that there's seven-eighths of an inch of glass and aluminum between me and death. Certain, absolute, inescapable death." He shook slightly and clenched his fists. "And I'm here with my absolutely insane "Family"" Dean made quotation marks when he said family, slowly working himself into a nervous mess.

"You sound so sure that someone vill die." Dean didn't bother responding. Anything that could likely get children's services involved he wasn't allowed to talk about. The rest of the short trip to the command center was silent except for the light footfalls of four feet.

---

Time passed, as was its nature, and Dean found himself left alone with his father in the command center. He was pushing buttons and flicking levers and switches, acting no better than his brother, not even looking at the buttons he pressed as he attempted to shut off the tiny red light.

Dean's thoughts took a sharp turn when he realized he couldn't see the blond. Hank was somewhere on the ship. Somewhere out of sight. Somewhere, unsupervised, with no-one watching him.

"Oh hell..." He started pacing around the room. "Ooh hell, dad, hey uh, dad?"

"Don" sighed, getting his sons name wrong again as he flicked another switch. "What is it this time?"

"I-uh-I'm heading back to the jet, 'kay?" The doctor waved off his sons statement, engrossed in accomplishing nothing.

"Anyway, I was wondering if I could get a five for the vending machine I saw on the way here?" Dean hadn't seen any vending machines, and he was sure his father knew there were no vending machines, but if the man was distracted...

"Yeah, yeah, fine. Whatever. My wallets in the jet-" And right there, Dean left the room "-and share with your brother, alright Dan?"

Rusty Venture turned away from the console when his son didn't respond, and found himself alone. Very, very alone.

"Space phantoms... heh" The lone doctor popped a pill and turned around, slapping a switch and setting off the events that would lead to him fixing, and creating, the problems of the Gargantua-1.

---

Dean was many things. He was, in his own opinion, a little smarter than average. He had an unusually strong dose of common sense (At least compared to the rest of his family). He had a very healthy dose of fear for his own life (Which resulted in him having a near pathological fear of being with his family in space or below sea), even to the point where he didn't mind being called a coward. Most importantly, he knew where he was safe, and those were the places he preferred being.

Which is why he locked the door of the X-1 to his fathers password, locking out his well-meaning-yet-suicidal brother.

He knew exactly what he planned to do. He grabbed his fathers wallet out of the nook he'd left it, pulled out the smallest bill in it (A twenty, no singles or fives to be found), pulled his current book out of his backpack (Getting around the kitchen for dummies) and locked himself in the bathroom.

He thought he'd seen Brock outside (He had, he knew it), which had been the final push. He wasn't coming out of the micro-sized bathroom until it was time to leave, family be damned.

Authors Note: I'm getting a little tired of working with the Fanfiction . net document editor. For some reasons every time I use it pieces of what I write like to go missing.


	3. Chapter 3

Total recall

A rare and unusual disorder in the venture family can make everything and nothing absolutely different.

Disclaimer: I don't own the venture brothers, be it the person(s) mentioned or the show.

Chapter 3

Home Insecurity

Dean lay in his room, seperate and far away from his brother's room.

Actually, it was just down the hallway from Hank's room, in what was, at one point in time, a guest room. Complete with attached bathroom.

Most importantly, unlike his brothers room, it wasn't directly over his fathers lab. That was an extremely important piece, it allowed him a sense of safety, no matter how meager it was.

Which was bolstered by the fact that the room was soundproofed before he'd commandeered it, the door was an extra of his fathers tempered steel doors for the lab (He had to lift when he opened the door, the hinges just weren't made for the weight) that Brock had helped him install a while back, and the windows were the original compounds Endura-flex Tempered windows (Your bones will break before this window or your money back!), and this was the second safest room in the house, first if you consider the company.

Even though he knew all of this, Dean couldn't do anything to quell the suffocating feeling in his chest. Something was wrong in the house, something had to be, to keep him awake even longer, because after not getting any sleep for the last two and a half days he was completely exhausted.

Was Hank inside the lab? No.

Was the lab door locked? Yes.

Was Helper still around? Yes.

Was Brock still around? Not for much longer.

Was his door locked? Yes.

There was only one thing on that list that was worrisome, and even then it wasn't that big a deal, Brock had taken his annual trip as long as Dean could remember.

Dean came to a pair of decisions.

Find out what was bothering him.

Or

Do something else and worry about it later.

Dean put his pants back on, grabbed his pillow and comforter, and picked option B. Then he put down his pillow and comforter and went to the bathroom before picking them up again. Having a full bladder would be a bad idea... But the rest of his insomnia-driven plan seemed to be at least a little bit better than staying here with... With... Something, yeah.

He locked his door behind him, he'd learned not to trust his immediate family, unfortunately the hard way. His T.V. was black and white, and got really bad reception, but damnit! It was his!

-- -- --

Brock looked over the desolation in confusion and surprise. He was gone for a day, hell, less than a day, and there were bodies lying every- SHIT!

He could not have just hit the professor. No. Not good, not good!

Car door opens, car door slams shut, and the mulleted blond is looking down at a hulking metal monstrosity... With the professors head shown on a t.v. screen about where he'd expect to see a face.

Brock exhaled slowly, this was alright, he had a lot of questions, but this was by far not the strangest thing he'd seen here.

He heard a click. He turned around and pulled out his knife. His trunk was open, a leg was coming out the side clumsily, then a hand gripped the side, and Dean's head poked out.

Brock stared at Dean. Dean blinked back at him.

"Could you try and avoid some more potholes in the future?" The question was calm, as though he hadn't noticed the numerous dead bodies lying around the front lawn of the Venture compound. Then Dean's head shifted as he stepped out of Brock's trunk, carrying a pillow and his overstuffed comforter.

"Ah, bodies... Could you try and avoid more bodies in the future?" Dean was one of the stranger things in the compound, but at least he wasn't the 'Accidentally kill you' strange that was Hank.

Chapter 3.5 The Incredible Mister Brisby. A double feature due to just how short the chapter above was.

"Brisbyland, Brisbyland, Brisbyland!" Hank was literally bouncing in his seat, the figurative opposite of Dean who was hunched over and clutching his abdomen.

"Sorry Hank, but you're staying here, with your brother. I will be going to Brisbyland, that's right, me, while you stay here and watch the jet, or something." The amount of arrogance the balding old man exuded was matched only rarely by the collective ego's of jocks in the locker-room before a big game.

Dean lifted his head and passed a glare at his father while his stomach produced an unpleasant, rumbling squelch. "Could you pick up some pepto from a gift shop, or somethin'?"

"Dean, have you seen the prices they charge at those gift shops? We could live off of how much people spend at those places." Which was an asinine statement considering he'd sooner make them live on less when it wasn't his stomach on the line. Both redheads nearly fell out of their seats when they landed, impacting harder than intended.

"Listen, Dean, I'll do, uh, do what I can, alright? Just try not to kill your brother." Brock told him as both he and the doctor exited to jet, meeting with a very big man wearing a turban. Dean groaned quietly as he eyed his blonde brother.

He was just sitting there, a depressed look on his face as he tapped the armrest. Now this... This just wouldn't do. "Hey Hank, you uh, you might want to vamoose."

The blonde turned around in his seat to get a better look at his hunched over brother and looked confused. "Why?"

There was a low sound, a rumbling noise coming from Dean, and then a long, high pitched 'Phweet' sound.

"That'd be why." Dean said in a high pitched voice as he begun struggling with his seatbelt and more wet, gaseous sounds began emenating from him. There was a swift 'Click' as Hank flew from his seat and practically jumped out the door of the X-1.

A quiet click accompanied Dean getting up from his seat and a near silent plop indicated him dropping the whoopy cushion that he'd hidden under his jacket. A series of seven quiet beeps and a longer, more irritating beep was the final indicator that his brother was locked out of the jet.

"Told that bastard there wasn't nothin' wrong with my cooking. But no~o 'It looks raw', no, it just didn't look burnt, stupid son-of-that-bitch." Dean took a look out the porthole and watched his brother... attempting to catch a butterfly. "The poor, stupid bastard."

Dean, now the sole occupant of the X-1, shuffled about with little energy as he pulled out a lunch box from his backpack and removed a foil wrapped sandwich.

His stomach wasn't wombling from indigestion and toxic gas, he'd just been hungry.

Bacon, a scrambled egg, sheet, omelet thing, and cheese. All made at home. Except the cheese, he had no idea how to go about making cheese. Something involving yeast cultures and curdled milk, but that wasn't the point. He'd cooked breakfast the other day for everyone, and he'd been the one who ended up eating everything he'd cooked. All day. The sandwich was the absolute last of the leftovers, and even though it'd been sitting in the fridge all day it still tasted better than the breakfast crap at O'Donahans.

Just as he was about to take a bite of the sandwich, he heard the warning beeps of someone attempting and failing to enter the X-1. He looked over to see his brother's terrified face in the porthole, screaming and banging on the window.

Dean flipped him the bird.

He was surprised when his brother was hit in the side of the head with a... Orange half? Alright, that was weird. Whomever hit his brother replaced his face in the doors porthole, looking far too serious, and started yelling at the door.

Dean also flipped him the bird, but he also got up, shoved both hands against the porthole and into the guys face, and set the manual lock on the door. It probably wasn't necessary, and he didn't hear the short jingle the late doctor Venture had set for when the proper code was accepted, but damn if he was getting back up until he saw his dad, and more importantly, Brock, outside that damn door.

-- -- --

Much later, Dean was lounging across his chair, legs dangling off one side and a magazine over his face when his wristwatch communicator started going off. He attempted to ignore it and go back into the half-daze he was in, but it just wouldn't shut up.

"Wha-aw-ah-at?" Dean yawned into his watch as he clicked on the screen. Whoa, Brock really didn't look at all good.

"Dean, start the jet!" And he had Dad and Hank slung over each of his shoulders.

"Why?"

"Because both of them need to go to the hospital, so START THE JET NOW!" Huh, veins sticking out on Brocks neck is probably not very healthy. Dean unlocked the door while staring at his watch.

"Again, why?"

"If your dad dies, then who's gonna pay for food, huh Dean?"

"His... Life insurance?" Ooh, that definitely wasn't the answer the bodyguard was looking for.

"He hasn't paid his premium, IN FIVE YEARS! START THE JET!" Oh.

"Damnit..." Dean mumbled as he flicked the first switch of the start-up sequence. Just his luck.

AN/ This doesn't really feel up to whatever ephemeral standard I tend to try and hold myself to, but then again I've been unable to catch any of the Venture Bros while they're on. Add in that I've just been feeling off lately, and I didn't see a whole lot that I could do with these two episodes, and this is what you get.


	4. Eeny, Meeney, Miney, Magic

Total recall

A rare and unusual disorder in the venture family can make everything and nothing absolutely different.

Disclaimer: I don't own the venture brothers, be it the person(s) mentioned or the show.

Episode Five:

-----

Dean stared at the chessboard. One black pawn, a black rook, a white bishop, and the kings really need not be mentioned.

For several minutes Dean just sat there staring.

"Hey Dean, listen to this!" And then his concentration was broken, not that it mattered much, the move he was going to make was obvious to him since the black knight was sacrificed.

"Yeah?" Dean pulled the pawn towards himself and replaced it with the queen.

"The oijia board I was playing with in the other room-"

"You were playing with yourself?" Dean quietly avoided laughing as he moved the bishop.

"Well yeah, you won't play with me anymore." The rook moved to the edge of the board. "And you'll never guess what it said!"

Dean moved the pieces quickly, none of the remaining black pieces landing on black squares while chasing the white king into the corner. After three moves, Hank had finally had enough.

"It said you're going to fall in love!" Dean's hand paused while moving the rook. "Well, you're going to find "True Love" but it's the same thing, right?"

Dean flicked the white king on it's side and leaned back into the couch.

"Why" Dean mumbled almost silently "do all you fresh clones have to be so stupid?"

Undead native Americans laid siege to the compound every full moon, and had done so ever since Hank the Second was activated when the boys were ten. Listening to moaning zombies try to break into the compound was bad enough, he didn't need his apparantly retarded brothers clone attracting poltergeists.

...Again.

"HEY! Who are you?!" Dean froze, his eyes rolling to a stop as he focused on his brother's eyes. He was looking at the door to the front entrance, he was pointing, he was, he was falling to his side, eyes closed.

'Be very still and make no noise and hope they do not see you.' Began repeating itself in his mind. His breathing slowed as he forced himself into a false calm and his eyes began roaming the room. Nothing, nothing, nothing he could use. His blood was starting to sound like a drum in his ears as his eyes fixed themselves on the television and he heard the intruder take a few steps towards the couch.

The T.V. was turned off and he could easily see the reflection of the intruder. He seemed to have black hair and he had this strangely embroidered coat and he, he was staring right back into Dean's own eyes.

'Oh He-' And Dean's thoughts faded into darkness.

-----

Dean woke up screaming. Not surprising considering the 'Dream' he'd had. Then he turned to his side, buried his face into his pillow and screamed louder. After emptying and refilling his lungs a few more times, Dean got up.

The nausea was starting to pass, and he was finally starting to get his bearings.

"What'ya screamin' for Dean? I's too early."

The nausea was starting to pass and he was finally starting to get his bearings, in his brother's room. A quick self-inventory had him dressed in a pair of thrice-damned underoos and his hair had been cut, but at the same time he still had a number of very small, very faded scars where a dog had clawed him.

Dean was both relieved and exasperated. His clothes were gone, which meant his key was gone. If he was lucky, Brock had it. More likely, he didn't. Dean left the room and headed for the kitchen, cursing his luck, the man in the funny clothes, and the tightness of the crotch of the underoos.

He jerked open the silverware drawer and grunted. There was a plastic silverware organizer in the drawer, so why was the silverware completely disorganized?

"Dean." There was a loud clatter as Dean's hand jerked, sending some of the forks, spoons, and knives to the floor. Immediately he crouched down to start picking them up. "Dean, what are you looking for in here? Dean, I'm up here, look at me, c'mon, look'it me, Dean, Dean-o, up here."

Dean threw a spoon. Then he picked up a butterknife.

"Am I going to have to ground you?" Dean dropped all but the butterknife back in the drawer and turned a glare on his father. He just barely caught a key thrown at him. "Go get dressed, we're going to meet the new tenants."

-----

Dean glared at the room. He was in here, or they, he couldn't honestly tell how many. Numbers didn't really matter so much. His bedspread was messed up, no big deal. The clothes in his dresser were rearranged, no big deal. His shampoo and soap were untouched, but his dirty clothes hamper had been refilled in reverse order.

All of his privacy had been violated, but they hadn't found where he'd hidden his money, which was a good sign that Brock hadn't been in here. Or else that Brock simply didn't care to point out the fifty bucks he'd hidden away from his dad.

Dean changed into a well-worn pair of jeans and a shirt with the name of some band he'd never listened to, and then untaped the wallet on the back of his top dresser drawer. He pulled out his bottom drawer, grabbed the hammer and screwdriver set hidden underneath of it, and moved to his door. A quick look around the hallway showed that he was alone. He locked his door and then jammed the butterknife just inside the latch.

Nothing, the door wouldn't move. Normally what he was shooting for, just not this time.

He slid the knife up and down a few times, hitting the door latch. Neither the doorknob or the door itself moved.

"Um, huh. I really wish they had better directions on the internet." He pushed the flat of the blade against the door frame and then slid the blade against the latch. He then pushed the knife and pulled on the door at the same time, finally getting the knife in between the latch and the door. Slowly, unsure, he slid the knife further in and pushed the door, succeeding in opening his supposedly securely locked door, without unlocking it.

"That's kinda cool..." Dean muttered as he walked back into his room. He grabbed the hammer and double-checked to make sure his door was locked.

"Please tell me your done, boy? Even your mother didn't take this long." Dean jammed the key in the keyhole and grinned.

"Dean, what the hell are you -SNAP- doing!?" Dean tossed the hammer in his room and slammed the door shut, avoiding the sharp, jagged sliver of metal that stuck out of the now jammed keyhole to his door.

"Nothin' pop, why?" Dean lacked the face for a butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth smile, but the one he did have would light up a room.

The older redhead rubbed his bald forehead and mumbled something Dean couldn't make out. "Fine Dean, we can play this 'Game' if that's what you want. Now go back in there, and get dressed in something nice."

Dean turned the doorknob back and forth a few times, indicating very clearly that the door was locked. He stepped back as his father tried his hand at the door, listening contently as the doorknob clicked while the older man tried to open the door.

"I suppose you'll be rooming with Hank until we've fixed this?" The old man didn't have to sound so happy at having one of the first rules Dean broke fixed.

Dean ignored him as he started walking down the hall, and down the stairs. No, he'd be sleeping in his own room tonight, but it was a long walk into town, and just as long a walk back. There was no way he'd even dream of walking around outside in this weather wearing a vest that didn't breathe, and slacks that caused sweating even without the heat.

The problems of living anywhere that had cacti.

-----

"Ah, and you must be Dean!" Dean shook the hand of their newest tenant, a nervous grin on his face while his dad stood behind him, a hand on his shoulder. The man was apparently some type of magician, which Dean already knew, he had a daughter, who was staring at him oddly, and it was as he was wondering why the older man had such a limp grip that he realized why he was there.

His old man was grooming him to take over the train wreck he was going to leave behind.

Granted, he'd had an inkling that such was the case when he'd been coerced into meeting with the crackheads renting out the opposite end of the compound, but the actual realization had so much more impact.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, mister Orpheus ." Don't smile too wide, and try not to yawn. The night terror adrenalin was wearing off and he was crashing into what most people would consider a normal morning attitude. Surly, short-tempered, and generally unhappy.

"No, no Dean. The pleasure's mine." The large cloak, the angular face, the creepy grin. Dear god, the man was from the dark ages. Or a pedophile, but there are more than a few things Dean wasn't going to ponder on. He stopped paying attention when the man let go of his hand and started talking to the baldest among them, known to most as the current Doctor Venture.

His internal debate on whether or not to use sunblock was interrupted when the girl (He really should have listened when the new doctor said her name) grabbed his shirt and jerked.

"What?"

"Do you want breakfast or not?" Alright, so Lydia has an attitude, at least she's not calling Beetle Juice down on him yet.

A few short steps and they were in the kitchen, and Dean was forced to silently admit to himself that what's-her-name was as cute as she was creepy. He caught a glimpse into the fridge when she grabbed the milk and came to a short list of decisions. He could either offer to cook and try to start this relationship off on a good note, or he could eat cold cereal and sit here in an awkward silence...

Dean bit his bottom lip and considered the fact that it really was a hard decision to make.

"What do you like on your eggs?" She stopped opening cupboard doors and glared at him.

"I'm not cooking for you." He brushed off her glare easily and opened the refrigerator door.

"Did I ask you to?" A full dozen eggs, some cheap ham, off-brand cheese. No bacon, but that's just as well, he only saw one pan. He pulled out the ham, eggs, and cheese and set them next to the oven while he went off for the skillet.

"You know, a conversation only works if two people are involved." The screech that reached his ears sounded rather angry for a sound made by metal sliding on tile.

Grabbing the skillet from the open cupboard next to the sink and some cooking spray from off the top of the fridge, he suddenly stopped and stood in front of the oven.

"Are you trying to piss me off?" Dean blinked and shook his head, freezing up in thought twice in one morning was not a good sign. It did get her to speak though.

"You still haven't told me what you want on your omelet. Are ham and cheese fine?" Dean exhaled slowly through his nose, alright, that wasn't too big an issue.

"Yeah, it's fine. Why're you doing this?" Dean turned the oven burner knob to halfway and sprayed the pan.

"I'm hungry." Left unsaid was the fact that he lived off of cereal four days a week, and whatever fits in the microwave for the other three. At least, when he wasn't willing to cook for the rest of the ungrateful bastards he lived with.

Dean set the pan on the burner and turned around to look at... at... He really needed to ask her name.

"Where are your plates and bowls?" She pointed to the cabinet next to the fridge. He grabbed one of each, and snagged a knife and fork from the drainer next to the sink on his way back.

"So what's your favorite album?" Dean didn't even pause in what he was doing when she asked the question.

"Huh?" Though that's not to say he had any clue what she was talking about.

"You're wearing a Lu'Rose shirt, what was your favorite album?" That made a little more sense.

"Whatever album had the song "Corrupting King" on it." The more important question that was coming to Dean's mind was 'Where's the spatula at?'.

Dean eventually found the spatula, and eventually she realized that Dean had a very limited musical library, although she thought what he did have was mostly in good taste. With time enough, the omelet was finished, the ham and cheese added, the large sheet of egg cut in half and a piece set in front of both the boy and the girl.

Dean took a bite, marveling every time he cooked something at the fact that it actually tasted good. What's-her-name, after watching him chew and swallow, took a bite of her own.

"It's good." Dean nodded as he cut off another piece with his fork.

"I wouldn't have done it if I couldn't have done it." They were mostly done eating when the 'Adults' came in.

"Ah, Trianna, I wasn't expecting you to cook." So that was her name. Neither teen spoke up to tell him that Dean had cooked.

"I and the good doctor will be over at his lab, he has a machine he'd like to show me, so I'll be back later on." Trianna nodded.

"Hey dad." The bald red-head stopped in the doorway. "Something I ordered showed up in town, so I'll be home later on tonight."

Dean's father said nothing as he left, at least nothing that Dean could hear, so he shrugged it off as the old man, being an old man. With that done, he picked up the plates and forks he and Trianna had used to get started on washing them.

"You're going into town?"

"Yeah."

"Can you like, drive, or something?" Dean paused in scrubbing off melted cheese.

"Nope, just got my legs."

"But that's gonna take forever."

"Yeah... Is there something you want in town?" When she didn't answer, Dean turned around and found... Nothing. He was alone in the kitchen.

"Y'know, I understand that people complain about me being depressing and shit, but at least I have a personality outside of being depressing... Bitch." He mumbled under his breath to himself. He finished the dishes and locked the door as he left the Orpheus household and considered which way he was going to go. It was a five mile walk one way, or a six and a half mile walk the other way, but if he went the other way he could avoid the trailer park. Without any real thought he decided on going the other way, there were just a few people at the trailer park that irked him the wrong way, both intentionally and unintentionally. Especially this one jackass who felt he had to harass Dean every time he walked by.

-----

"What the hell?" Why were there no lights on? Both the main compound and the Advanced Arachnid Research Center were completely- no, wait, there was a light on in the AARC. So what was going on? It was only a little past six, so nobody in their right minds should be in bed yet.

Dean flipped on a few of the lights as he walked through his home. Empty, not a soul to be seen.

"Either I should go looking for my family..." Dean quickly decided against that. "Or I should go install the new doorknob I had to buy."

It was almost fifteen minutes later that Dean came to a startling conclusion. Adding a chain lock to the door, which would have been simple otherwise, was nearly impossible without a power drill and the proper drill bit to get through the tempered steel.

Five minutes into searching for a power drill lead him into his father's lab, against his better judgement.

"What the hell's everyone doing here?" Everyone included Doctor Orpheus and Doctor Venture.

"Oh, the usual, your brother and Brock are trapped in the Joy Can until it kills them."

"Ah, o-what!?" Dean closed his eyes hard and tried to believe he'd misheard. Unfortunately, he opened his eyes and realized that no, no he didn't.

"We've just been discussing how to get them out when you walked in." Dean rubbed his temples, wondering just how he managed to walk into this shit.

"Have you tried pulling the plug and resetting whatever keeps the locks locked?" Both the older men nodded.

"Yes, but your father says that the machine is hardwired into the power grid of the compound." The magician was acting oddly nervous.

"O-kay, y'know what, I'm going to deal with this later, much, much later." Dean slammed the door behind him, ignoring his father's calls. 'Why' he wondered 'do smart people have to be so dumb?'

Getting to the adjoining hanger was a very short trip, shutting off the power to the lab required the use of a nearby Flathead screwdriver and a hammer. On a positive note, however, he did find a power drill and drill bit set in his dad's tool chest.

-----

AN/ This was actually kind of fun, at least the imagery of it was.


	5. Ghosts of the Sargasso

Total recall

A rare and unusual disorder in the venture family can make everything and nothing absolutely different.

Disclaimer: I don't own the venture brothers, be it the person(s) mentioned or the show.

Ghost of the Sargasso

Chapter Six.

"Testing, testing, Dean is this thing even on? Dean?" Doctor Venture's face asked from a computer screen.

"Yeah dad, you're on line one." Dean minimized the window with his fathers face and pulled up a different window.

"Then let it be recorded that on this day, I, the great Doctor Thaddeus S. Venture rediscovered-Click!-" And that was Dean clicking the power button on the computer's speakers. Opening up another window on the computer, he ran a search on how to build his own computer. He had most of the materials already, he was sure, but that didn't exactly mean he knew where what went, and what it was supposed to be attached to.

There was actually nothing wrong with the computer in front of him, it was a bit old and outdated, to be sure, but it still worked perfectly. The problem really came with what he'd had the misfortune of finding on it. Three of the computers eight gigabytes of memory were dedicated to images of child pornagraphy, stored in hidden, read-only folders. Another two were just gone, and Dean still hadn't found whatever folder was eating up that memory. He was relatively certain he didn't want to know either.

One of the many risks of buying a used computer at a yard-sale, Dean supposed, but it wasn't a risk that he, or his family, should really be taking. After all, who doesn't enjoy having a SWAT team bust down your door in the middle of the night, only for half of them to be slaughtered by an insane Swedish monster, because the C.I.A. or some other watchdog organization is invading the privacy of your PC while you surf the net?

While the directions were printing, Dean stood up and stretched, making his chest and several vertebrae in his back pop. With directions in hand, he walked up to his room to collect the computer internals. With bags full of boxes in hand, he then made his way down to the hangar, where the computer shell, gutted and dusty, had been waiting for months. He'd not even arranged things when the days first interruption made herself known.

"DEAN!" A sultry, female voice, or at least it would have been the former had the person not been yelling, screamed from behind him. Dean made an attempt to grab a box he'd dropped from the shock, but all he managed to do was jam his fingers against the table edge. "That is Dean, right Tri?"

"Yeah. Can we like, use your pool?" Dean stopped mentally swearing when he turned around. Triana was there, along with a pitted feeling in his stomach, and another girl, red hair, goggles, nice face, but something about her seemed somewhat off.

"Sure." Turning around, Dean picked up the box- a fan, and set it on the table. Flexing the fingers of his left hand hurt, but at least the joints were loosening up. Full movement restored, Dean slid off the side panel and-

"So what are you doing?" Turning around, Triana was gone, but the red-head was standing right behind him. He hadn't even heard her walking up behind him.

"I'm sorry, who are you?" Tight fitting dark clothes, the goggles on her head, was she trying to give off a villian impression?

"I'm Triana's friend." Closing his eyes, Dean let out a slow breath. She was being obtuse on purpose, of that he was sure.

"Let me rephrase that-"

"I'm Kim." She giggled when he sent her a frustrated glare. Shaking his head, he turned back around and grabbed the box with the fan in it.

"Well, Kim, I'm putting together a computer." Opening the box, he pulled out the many-times folded over piece of paper that were the instructions and, like any young man who could be called a nerd, began reading them.

"Huh. Why would you do that? Is it going to be, like, a super computer or somethin'?" She walked around the table and picked up a clear plastic box, holding four gigabytes of random access memory, and started reading the back of it.

"No, well, it'll be a great gaming computer, I hope. No, our current PC is a family computer, and I don't like sharing a bugged up computer with the rest of the family." That was all completely true, but he didn't mention the fact that he intended to destroy the family PC. He had no doubt that Hank would eventually live long enough to learn how to use a computer... He had some well founded doubts that Hank would eventually live long enough to learn how to use a computer, but as it was, all of the current clones were being awakened in what would be the late-teens stage of developement. That means raging hormones, raging hormones have a direct link to greater (Or worse, depending on how it's viewed) stupidity, and that could potentially mean googling about the stuff Hank could find in the computer's "Download" folder.

A system reformat would be an otherwise perfect solution, if they'd actually had the discs that went to the computer.

The watch on Dean's left wrist started beeping, but with a deft flick it stopped.

"Man, I know what you mean. My brother's always looking up, like, cartoon porn and stuff. I mean, he's killed the computer twice already." Dean felt his face heat up at the abrupt topic crossover, but did his best to not let it show. "So what kind of stuff do you like to watch?"

"...Excuse me?" With her question, the bottom of his stomach seemed to drop, just like he felt whenever Triana was around. Which was fantastic, because he could finally say exactly what he felt when he was around the goth.

Nervousness and fear. He still didn't know why, but at least he knew what he felt.

"You know, what kind of porn do-"

"Kim! You're the one who wanted to go swimming. Come on!" That was most likely the closest Triana ever came to hollering, at least without breaking her 'Goth' exterior, and Dean couldn't be more thankful for it. He finished tightening the last screw that held the fan in place, and debated what to do next.

"Fuck it." He mumbled as he stood up and went to the open side door. He caught one last glimpse of the pair of friends entering the arachnid research compound. Closing the door, he spared the handle a moment of debate before locking it. The conversation with Kim was not one he intended to continue.

Over the course of the next two hours Dean had completed assembling the computer, during the course of which he'd had to disassemble almost a third of it when he'd put it together in the wrong order because he'd made a mistake when reading the instructions. It sucked, sure, but it was hardly the most costly mistake he'd ever made.

Lugging it back up to his room, he had to put it down for a moment in order to get his keys.

The inside of his room was... not a chaotic mess, but it wasn't as clean as it had been in the recent past. He'd been moving a lot of the files out of the Orpheus family garage recently and going through them, which, it seems, had been an astoundingly good idea.

He'd filed five seperate patents of his late grandfather's work over the past few weeks and he was already recieving a good sum in royalties. Well, he and his father, technicaly, but whatever statements went to the post office box in town, his dad never saw.

Clearing out a corner, Dean set down the computer, found a monitor and set it next to the tower, and went downstairs and grabbed the keyboard from the family computer. A little bit more work connecting everything, and two small button presses had the Windows XP logo fade into view.

There were a lot of questions and notifications about newly installed hardware, but after roughly fifteen minutes he was looking at an otherwise blank screen. Stretching his arms out over his head, he fell back into a stack of manilla folders, a grin on his face.

And then he heard a high-pitched whirring and noticed a thin vapor trail over the top of the computer tower.

"...FUCK!" Dean fell over another stack of folders and rolled through some papers to reach the outlet and ripped the three-pronged plugs out of the wall.

"Damnit, damnit, damnit, damnit, damnit! Did I break the fan, or is it just drawing too much power?" Hastily pulling the chords out of the back of the tower, he ignored the ringing of his watch and instead held his hand against the back panel of the computer. It didn't feel hot, so it wasn't just the fan over-reacting. He exhaled slowly and calmed himself down. "Well, nothing I can do about it today."

Dean made himself a sandwich as evening set in, and then took it and his chess set outside as the sun set. Midway into a game, half of his sandwich forgotten on a chair, the illustrious Doctor Orpheus, potential pedophile or else man with just really freakin' creepy taste, sat across from him.

"Would you mind if I join you for a game?" Dean gave him a small smile. A new opponent was always fun.

"Pick your side." It really wasn't an offer, Dean was a defensive player, and as such always picked black. He reset the board to that exact effect.

"I believe I shall play the white team tonight." He moved out a knight and so began a battle of wits. It was unfortunately a battle that Dean lost in forty-seven moves, failing to neutralize the enemy knights until his army had been routed.

"I'd thought I'd find you out near the pool with the girls." The two men watched the last vestiges of light fading from the sky, one young and the other... not.

"Kim's a bit unsettling, and something about your daughter scares me. My dad wanted you to check up on me, didn't he." The way it was said, both already knew the answer.

"Indeed. Your father expects the trip to take several days. If you wish to spend the night, our couch is quite comfortable." The man looked like he was expecting an answer, instead of Dean's silent acquiessence.

"Did dad tell you about my sleeping problem?" The old man nodded, and Dean mimicked him slowly. "I'll think about it for tomorrow, alright?"

"Of course, Dean. Tomorrow then?" With Dean's nod, the man left, and with the sun down he decided it was time to go in.

Sitting himself down in front of the computer and pulled up his fathers video screen. He did not look good, but he wasn't saying anything. Playing back a few different moments, he found himself with a rather disturbing movie.

"Dean, for the love of god, answer your watch!"

"Please, Dean, please, answer your watch!""

"DEAN!"

"DEAN!"

"DEA-" That clip ended with Doctor Venture and something else screaming bloody murder.

"You know what" Dean muttered as he minimized the screen "unless he's dead, I don't care. Dead or crippled, otherwise... Fuck him."

Grabbing a book (Chemistry - Grade Eleven) Dean sat down in the living room, vainly hoping to burn out today's memory with tedium.

As if that ever worked.

A/N We're starting to really veer off course, and I can't help but think that it's a good thing.


End file.
